Guide · website without WordPress · checked September 28, 2026

A website without WordPress: when plain HTML is enough

Ask for a small business website and there is a good chance you end up on WordPress: W3Techs finds it on 40.2% of all websites. It is a capable system, and keeping it updated is work that many owners pay someone to do. Below are published estimates of that upkeep and my prices for a plain HTML site, followed by what you give up without WordPress.

Written by Paul, Fast Dev 24. I build small business sites in plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, without WordPress, so weigh my side of the argument accordingly. I checked the linked price pages, guides and the Patchstack report on September 28, 2026.

What WordPress gives you

WordPress keeps your pages in a database and gives you an admin screen where you log in and edit them. Install a plugin and the same screen can take bookings, sell products or run a members' area. It is also the most common content management system: W3Techs finds it on 58.7% of the websites whose system it can identify.

That flexibility is worth paying for when you add pages or products often, even as a one-person business, or when staff add hundreds of products to an online store.

What it costs to keep a WordPress site running

The two guides below are written by people who build WordPress sites for a living. Flamingo Agency sells WordPress web design, and Mark Brinker writes that his team uses Gravity Forms and Envira Gallery on nearly every site it builds. Their figures are estimates; the Kinsta and Gravity Forms rows are product prices from their own pages. Read the rows as examples, not a bill to add up: premium plugins are optional.

What you pay for	Price	Source
Maintenance: theme, plugin and core updates	$50–200 a month	Flamingo Agency estimate
Website maintenance plan	$40–300 a month	Mark Brinker estimate
Hosting	$20–100 a month	Flamingo Agency estimate
Managed WordPress hosting, one site	$35 a month, or $350 a year	Kinsta price page
Premium plugins when the site is built	$100–300	Mark Brinker estimate
Form plugin license, one site	$59 a year	Gravity Forms price page
Hosting for a static site like mine	$0 on the free plan	Cloudflare Pages limits

Flamingo Agency updated its guide on January 3, 2026, and Mark Brinker on January 23, 2026. The Kinsta price is for its Single 20GB plan, the Gravity Forms price for its Basic license.

Why the maintenance line exists

Flamingo puts it plainly: themes, plugins and core software need regular updates to stay secure and working. Brinker adds that even small business websites are targets for hackers.

The WordPress security company Patchstack counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, 42% more than in 2024. Of those, 91% were in plugins and 9% in themes. WordPress core had six, all of them low priority. For 46% of the vulnerabilities, the developer had not released a fix by the time the problem was made public.

Attackers don't wait for your maintenance day. For heavily exploited vulnerabilities, Patchstack puts the weighted median time from disclosure to the first observed exploit attempt at 5 hours, and says that regular plugin updates, its second line of defence, are not a viable defence when attacks come within hours.

Source: Patchstack, State of WordPress Security in 2026, a report on the year 2025.

What a plain HTML site costs

A plain HTML site is a folder of files: pages, styles, pictures and a little JavaScript. There is no WordPress core and there are no plugins waiting for updates. The edit panel and the forms run on a small service that I maintain.

My price list is public: one page $50, four to eight pages $75–150, a shop with up to ten products $175–200. Redoing a site you already have is $100–150. Without extras, a site of up to 50 pages never costs more than $200. The whole list is in Pricing, and what agencies and freelancers charge for a comparable site is in How much a small business website costs.

A static site can be hosted free on Cloudflare Pages. The free plan allows 500 builds a month, where each build publishes a change to the site, and up to 20,000 files per site. I host your site free of charge. You receive the files after payment, and I can move the site to your own account on request. You pay for the domain renewal, and for changes only when you order them.

What you give up

Leaving WordPress out has a price: new pages and features beyond the panel go through me.

A plugin for every new feature

On WordPress, a new feature often means installing one more plugin. On my sites each feature is built for you and priced from the public list: card payments $50, booking with a calendar $50, customer logins $75, and a connection to your CRM, inventory system or shipping service $35 each. I don't build apps.

Adding pages from an admin screen

In WordPress you can add a new page whenever you like. On my sites you change the text, phone number, business hours, prices and photos yourself in the site's own panel, and the change is live within a minute. New pages or new sections are quoted as new work, and you also get the source files, so any other developer can work on the site. The details are in the FAQ.

When plain HTML is enough

The site tells visitors what you do, what it costs and how to reach you.
You change prices, hours and photos more often than you add pages.
You sell a handful of products, or nothing online at all.
One person looks after the site, and that person would rather not spend evenings on updates.

Stay with WordPress if you want to add pages and publish regularly yourself, or if your business runs on a plugin you can't replace.

Why I build without WordPress

I build every site myself, in plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I don't sell maintenance contracts. My sites have no WordPress core, themes or plugins to update. If something I built breaks in the first seven days after you accept the work, I fix it free. One round of changes is included in the price: you ask within seven days of delivery, and I make the changes within 24 hours.

You pay only after you have seen the finished site live. If you don't like it, you pay nothing. After payment you get the files and the rights to everything I made for the site. Third-party fonts, photos and libraries stay under their own licenses. The full rules are in the terms of work.

Example: WNR Group

WNR Group is an employment agency in Warsaw. Its site has 57 pages, 19 each in Polish, Ukrainian and English. In the site's own panel, the client changes phone numbers, addresses and the team list and writes articles without my help.

The site runs on the client's own domain, wnrgroup.work, from the client's own Cloudflare account. The client paid €150.